As Haiti prepares for its first general elections in a decade, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé sees the vote as more than an exercise in democratic renewal. He views it as an opportunity to reset a nation gripped by gang violence, mass displacement, economic collapse and years of political paralysis.

“This is the opportunity we missed in 2010 after the earthquake,” Fils-Aimé said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “I think that the situation we are in today, with the gangs, with people having to leave Haiti, having to leave Port-au-Prince, with all the hardship, I truly believe there is an awakening, especially among the youth.”

Fils-Aimé, 54, has sought to reflect that optimism by appointing younger faces to some government posts after the country’s controversial Transitional Presidential Council was dissolved on Feb. 7, and he became the sole governing authority. He argues that Haiti’s overlapping crises have created an opening for a different kind of politics than the one that has dominated the country since the 1986 fall of the nearly-30 year Duvalier family dictatorship.

His argument, however, is being met by mounting concerns over the organization of the upcoming elections and the country’s entrenched and predatory political culture. Skeptics are raising concerns over the emerging field, pointing out that among the political coalitions preparing to put up candidates, is one led by close allies of the prime minister.

“I told the prime minister that you’re in competition; you can no longer play the role of referee,” said Wadner Édouard, a political party leader who doesn’t believe the transitional government can impartially oversee elections.

Years without a Parliament, president

Since Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council opened voter registration and officially set the first round of voting on Dec. 13, academics, election observers and political leaders have questioned nearly every step of the electoral process —from its condensed timetable, which one political leader called “mathematically impossible” to hold, to the voter registration that critics warn could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

Critics agree that the elections could usher in younger candidates and first-time officeholders after eight years without a functioning Parliament and five years without an elected president following the July 7, 2021, assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The larger question, they say, is whether the process will allow newcomers to emerge or govern differently from their predecessors.

“It’s true we have a youth that is more educated and has excelled in academics. But that is not sufficient to produce better politicians,” said Géraldo Saint-Armand, a sociologist and author of La démission de l’homme — The Resignation of Man — a historical, anthropological and sociological reflection on Haitian society.

Examining what it means to be a citizen and how Haitian society functions, the sociologist said, “There is no evidence that gives us reason to hope.”

Haiti’s political class is deeply divided, and politics has become a vehicle for personal enrichment. And despite the ongoing crisis, there is still no consensus on the basic democratic norms needed for stable governance, said Saint-Armand, who teaches at the State University of Haiti in Limonade in northern Haiti.

“After an election, whoever loses should accept the role of the opposition instead of threatening the existence or legitimacy of the winner,” he said. “If we cannot establish and respect those basic rules ourselves, then we won’t make any real progress. We have a new generation, but the situation will remain unchanged.”

Changing the political culture

Fils-Aimé, who issued a circular this week for government employees to remain impartial during the process, says he’s keeping the faith over new leadership.

“From what I see, there are a lot of new leaders who will come on the scene,” he said, “and if what they’re saying before they’re in power, they do half of it, I have reason to be hopeful for the future.”

The difficulty of breaking with Haiti’s political culture, however, recently became evident when Fils-Aimé tapped a young U.S.-educated professional to head a government agency. Even before the swearing-in ceremony, supporters flooded social media with the same partisan trademark fervor of veteran politicians, suggesting that while the faces may be new, political habits remain the same.

Concerns of Haiti’s problematic political culture, and authorities’ failure to send the right signals about its culture of impunity, were recently echoed by departing foreign diplomats, particularly the representatives of the United States, France and Canada. Reflecting on his battle with the presidential council before its ejection from power, the U.S. chargé d’affaires, Henry Wooster, told Le Nouvelliste newspaper in a departing interview that “the most glaring problem we had with” the nine-member panel “was the deep-seated criminal corruption,” followed by “its predatory political nature, the inability to govern and the fueling of chaos.”

French Ambassador Antoine Michon criticized a controversial decree passed by the presidential panel, and not yet repealed by Fils-Aimé, that makes it difficult to prosecute senior government officials for wrongdoing while in office. The decree, “offers quasi-impunity, an institutionalization of impunity, for all past, present and future political leaders,” Michon told Le Nouvelliste.

“It is important that there are national voices, in civil society, to say that this should not be possible,” he said.

Other hurdles

An elections expert who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely about the sensitive topic said the shortened electoral calendar, limited voter outreach, security crisis and lack of resources all work against political newcomers without ties to traditional parties.

While new candidates could become attractive to potential voters, especially those casting votes for the first time, they will lose out on the support because first-time voters risk being excluded from voter lists, the election observer said.

“At this moment Haitian voters have not been mobilized to participate in this registration, and the result will be that several million Haitians who have ID cards, who are more than 18 years old, and have the right to vote, will not be on the voters’ list because they have not been mobilized,” the elections expert said.

More than two weeks after voter registration was launched, the head of the Provisional Electoral Council said Tuesday in a radio interview that some 60,000 eligible voters had registered, with half of the sites operational. It’s estimated that 5.6 million to 6.3 million Haitians age 18 and older hold a valid National Identification Office card, which is needed to register to vote.

Under the electoral law, a presidential candidate running without a party must submit 150,000 signatures, compared to 30,000 required for a political party. Filing fees range from roughly $15,250 for president to $6,000 for Senate candidates and $765 for mayoral coalitions.

Process fuels corruption

A record 316 political parties were approved by the elections council to field candidates, and authorities offered financial incentives in an effort to decrease their numbers. So far, 17 political alliances representing 227 political parties have registered with the elections council to run candidates. One of those alliance is a coalition consisting of at least 50 political parties spearheaded by close allies of the prime minister.

“They are controlling who has the resources, and they utilize all means of corruption to determine who can be a candidate,” Mathias Lauréus, a Haiti-based political analyst, said of those in power, while dismissing the prime minister’s comments on new leadership “as just words.”

Lauréus said politicians in recent days have described to him about being offered thousands of dollars to abandon one coalition in favor of another.

“These parties are nothing but opportunistic and ephemeral political formations,” said Robert Fatton, an expert on Haitian politics. The electoral council’s attempt to give monetary incentives for fusing the parties into more coherent political blocs “is unlikely to change that reality,” he added.

A new political era?

Édouard, the leader of Rally of Progressive National Democrats, said he shares the prime minister’s desire to see a new generation of political leaders emerge in Haiti.

But he questions the sincerity of those in charge of making it happen, given the concerns emerging about credibility and voter disenfranchisement.

In a statement after the electoral calendar was published, the party asked the elections council to move voter and party registrations online to maximize participation given both the ongoing gang-violence and the logistics challenges.

Édouard noted that the process demands that farmers, for example, spend money they do not have to reach voting centers far away from their homes in order to register to vote.

“What farmer today is going to spend 4,000 gourdes [about $30] to register for an election that after he votes he doesn’t see what difference it has made?” Édouard said.

Still, after 10 years without elections, Haiti needs political and democratic renewal, Édouard said. “It’s not by magic that we’re going to produce a new political class,” he said.

Édouard recalled that former president Leslie Manigat, who organized his political party while in exile in Venezuela and spent four months as president before he was overthrown in a military coup, often said governing Haiti required competence, integrity and patriotism.

“The country needs a group of people who have those three elements,” Édouard said, “and Manigat, when he said it, was clear: better the person lacks the competence, but possess the integrity and patriotism.”

Whether Haiti’s long-awaited elections produce those leaders, and whether the system allows them to succeed if they emerge, may determine whether the country is breaking with its past or entering a new political era.

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